David Soknacki still thinks a Scarborough LRT is a better idea than a Scarborough subway extension.

And to bolster his case, the Toronto mayoral candidate invited the public to walk the proposed route on Saturday, from Scarborough Town Centre to the Malvern neighbourhood.

But when you’re an underdog candidate, sometimes you draw an underdog’s crowd.

A modest cluster of 25 people — including campaign workers and media — turned out as Soknacki walked the LRT route from Scarborough City Centre to Malvern, and explained why he still thinks it’s a good idea.

The small turnout may reflect the fact that Toronto council has rejected the LRT, which would run northeastward seven stops on a dedicated right of way. The plan was fully funded, and would not require a tax increase.

Instead, council voted narrowly to extend the existing subway three stops — and levy a 1.6 per cent property tax increase to pay for it.

So what chance does Soknacki — who is polling in single digits, far behind the front-runners — really think he has of derailing the subway in favour of an LRT?

“If I’m elected? That’s a good question,” says Soknacki. “Every bit as much of a chance as David Miller had of stopping the bridge, or Rob Ford had of stopping Transit City.”

Miller succeeded in his first term in blocking a bridge to Toronto Island.

Ford, with his cry of “subways, subway, subways,” stymied much of Miller’s Transit City plan, which outlined a network of light rail lines across the city, largely on the surface.

As Soknacki hiked the Scarborough LRT route, he explained his rationale.

The fact that it’s fully funded is a big plus, he said.

More importantly, the LRT, operating on a dedicated right of way will serve “more people, faster, cheaper,” Soknacki argued.

The LRT, with more stops than the subway, will also serve the local Scarborough community better, he said: It will be more than a simple commuter line.

“Transit is complex. It’s not just vacuuming people into the core and then spitting them back out,” he said.

“What do you do with the people of Malvern? Not all of them work as financial planners downtown. Some of them want to go across the northern part of the city. The subway won’t do that for them; it’ll shoot them downtown.”

As for cost, Soknacki says the LRT was estimated at $1.8 billion in 2010, while the subway was pegged at $2.3 billion in 2013. But he notes some estimates now put the subway cost at over $3 billion.

The handful of curious citizens who came to hear his pitch included Julia Tharratt, a graduate student in public policy at University of Toronto.

She came “to learn a little more about the issue of subways versus LRT.”

“I’m not from Scarborough, but being a Torontonian this is important to us,” Tharratt said. “I know David has a different position on the LRT compared to some of the other candidates, so I wanted to hear his perspective.”

Leslie Chin, an engineer from the Scarborough neighbourhood of West Hill, also came to get more information.

“I like this idea. I like the Tory idea,” he said, referring to candidate John Tory’s proposal to using existing rail lines to carry more transit riders and ease subway crowding.

Chin’s worry is that the ideas he’s heard so far tend to create a series of major transit hubs, but don’t explain in detail how people get from the hubs to their homes.

Robert Ong, a 16-year-old student at Northview Heights Secondary in the Finch-Bathurst area, is too young to vote.

But he’s keen to hear the candidates’ ideas on planning and transportation.

“Besides Soknacki, I like two other candidates as well: Olivia Chow and John Tory,” he said.

Soknacki’s LRT plan “makes much more sense financially, and it serves more people than the subway,” he said.

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